A map update and some tidbits:
The Russians appeared stalled north of Kiev at this point (maybe getting drone bombed to hell, or just organizing for attack?). The push from the North East seems stalled and is showing a small column of Russian vehicles abandoned. They still seem to be making the most progress in the South, trying to push east into Mariupol (lower right). They are also pushing towards Energodor, home of what is apparently one of the largest nuclear power plant in Europe.
Energodor is where the civilians are blocking the roads with trucks, and are also standing in the roads to try and prevent the Russian advance. The Russian response :
Russian occupation troops attacked unarmed civilians blocking entrance to Enerhodar with grenade launchers and machine guns. Multiple casualties
The surrounded city in the North East:
Mayor of Konotop: city citizens assembly decided to reject Russian ultimatum to surrender or face massive bombardment
Kharkiv (middle right) seems to be facing more and more aggressive shelling.
Oh and this, you can check against what Put Put was saying:
Leaked document from Russian troops showing war against Ukraine was approved on 18th January, and initial plan to seize Ukraine starting 20th Feb to 06th March
And this lovely one:
Russian FM Lavrov warns that the third world war would be nuclear and destructive
Uh, yeah, thanks captain F'ing obvious, and if a stick a pole up your ass, you become a flag!
Weird how there has been a number of 'suicides' of Gasprom execs. Getting rid of those that know where money is?
Pete. (l33t FS) said:
In reply to fastoldfart :
Who would fly them?
Even relatively simple prop fighter pilots needed a few weeks of familiarization. One can't just hop in and brrrt.
I love that brrrt is a verb.
Russia makes its 1st announcement of substantial casualties in Ukraine
From NPR
I don't have a source, but I heard someone say this a couple days ago, so I'm asking:
Has anyone else heard that Russian TV had been playing historical video of Pootin and Trump to show how much the US supports Pootin's special exercise?
Careful with the specific names (you know how things can get).
I have heard they are showing something where a certain former world leader was noting how what Putin did was ingenious (in regards to working NATO's weaknesses I believe).
To be fair, noting that Putin is smart and or made a good move, does not imply support of of that person or their actions. I can certainly say that Hitlers use of similar western weakness to have them GIVE him the Sudetenland was brilliant. It does not imply or mean in ANY way that I support ANYTHING he did.
I have not heard about more general videos, but heck, you could certainly spin anything if you try hard enough, and the Russians are willing to try very hard in many cases. I don't see anything on Sputnik or RT (which can be a bit of a mess with the hack attacks).
Ukraine is reporting that the Russian FSB told the UDF about the existence and purpose of the Chechen assassination force. Which has been "destroyed" outside Kyiv.
In reply to aircooled :
If you want to negotiate with someone, telling them they're smart is a good way to start. Telling them they're a jerk, in public especially, is likely to result in negotiations being severely hampered.
To avoid being political, I'll simply say that some leaders understand this, and some...do not.
The current playbook against Putin right now seems very traditional, old school, "this is how we've always done it". And we got...pretty much what we've gotten before (Georgia, Crimea). I don't know what would work better, except possibly almost anything else.
llysgennad said:
Ukraine is reporting that the Russian FSB told the UDF about the existence and purpose of the Chechen assassination force. Which has been "destroyed" outside Kyiv.
Not sure if Ukrainian propanganda or Putin trying to put Ramzan Kadyrov in his place.
Noddaz said:
Russia makes its 1st announcement of substantial casualties in Ukraine
From NPR
No link if you meant there to be one.
Straight from the source:
https://t.me/news_echo/13447
(Google Translate):
Ministry of Defense of the Russian Federation: 498 Russian soldiers were killed during a special military operation Ukraine's losses during the operation of the Russian Federation amounted to more than 2,870 people killed. Conscripts and cadets of educational institutions of the Ministry of Defense do not take part in the operation in Ukraine, the department assured.
Russian oligarch who owns Chelsea soccer team has stated he is selling, certainly owing to pressure. https://www.cnn.com/2022/03/02/sport/chelsea-football-club-sale-spt/index.html
llysgennad said:
Ukraine is reporting that the Russian FSB told the UDF about the existence and purpose of the Chechen assassination force. Which has been "destroyed" outside Kyiv.
This one has been an interesting development. Are some people in the Russian military intentially sabotaging Putin, or is this deliberate misinformation to get Putin to be paranoid?
Ukraine has called on technology companies Oracle and SAP to suspend operations in Russia-Oracle says they have already done so. Oracle is US based and SAP is German, but both supply technologies that underpin everything from parking meters to power plants. I have no idea how much of an impact they could have on this, but we're likely to see increasing calls for other tech companies to halt operations as well.
https://www.zdnet.com/article/ukraine-government-calls-on-oracle-sap-for-support/
In reply to MadScientistMatt :
Razman Kadyrov, the leader of the Chechnya, has gained a decent amount of strength. I wonder if it was a way for Putin to deal with his best troops.
I am going with deliberate misinformation to either make Putin paranoid or try to anger the Chechnya.
I went to a family birthday party on sunday night. An elderly family member was there. She had been plunked in front of the tv news and left as family made dinner. I sat down to see her crying. She was having flashbacks to being gang raped by 7 Russian soldiers when she was 12. It was really sad and disturbing.
Erich
UberDork
3/2/22 3:56 p.m.
A few months before this invasion popped off, I watched a made-for-tv movie from the early 90s, By Dawn's Early Light.
Basically the plot goes: USSR is falling apart, some war-hungry Russians launch a nuke at Donetsk from Turkey and it sets off an automated response from the Soviets against NATO targets. From there you see a rapidly escalating US vs Russia nuclear bombardment, with both governments unable to fully comprehend what's going on in the fog of war.
I thought it was too unrealistic and farfetched, and the nuclear concerns were not really that relevant today. Now it seems prescient.
CrustyRedXpress said:
Ukraine has called on technology companies Oracle and SAP to suspend operations in Russia-Oracle says they have already done so. Oracle is US based and SAP is German, but both supply technologies that underpin everything from parking meters to power plants. I have no idea how much of an impact they could have on this, but we're likely to see increasing calls for other tech companies to halt operations as well.
https://www.zdnet.com/article/ukraine-government-calls-on-oracle-sap-for-support/
That's interesting. I know we have opened up employee matching donations to appropriate charities, as we always do, but I'm far enough down the totem pole I haven't heard anything about this yet.
NickD
MegaDork
3/2/22 4:12 p.m.
There are widespread reports of Russian troops punching holes in the fuel tanks of their vehicles to disable them so that they don't have to go into combat.
daeman
SuperDork
3/2/22 4:23 p.m.
In reply to z31maniac :
I'm really interested in this angle, and hadn't thought of it before. The historical parallel is IBM providng computing power that fueled the holocaust, or GM being part of the Nazi warmachine. Does Microsoft continue to provide patches to it's operating systems in Russia? What about Cloud 365 services? With the move to cloud and SaaS these tech companies have a continuing relationship with Russia...what happens when russian companies can't pay the bill, or MS decides they don't want to be on the wrong side of history?
I haven't read up on today's posts so my apologies in advance. This post starts over the weekend when the Hungarian government offered it's train system to Ukrainian refugees crossing into Hungary with no limits on where they could trave from the border station. The following Monday my hands were absolutely freezing while I was working on the interior of my new house (it doesn't have any heating). As I stopped to warm them up again by taking off my gloves and blowing on them, I thought to myself "damn man. There's people walking in this E36 M3". Rumor has it, the border crossing is measured in DAYS (10 of them, was the most I'd heard) and of course Ukraine was all they talked about on the radio that morning. It snowed a while later, and again that night.
Tuesday I was dropping off my youngest at the pre-school and I ran into a English speaking teacher friend of mine doing the same. Someone from a building neighboring her school had asked her if she had an extra ball on Monday. When she asked why he would ever need a ball, the reason he gave was "There's about 20 kids in here, and not a damn one of them has a toy"
She investigated and found 48 refugees now housed in the building. That was the start of a whirlwind of events.
She went shopping immediately, and shortly after I was able to snoop around and find the building she was talking about. It's an old Russian barracks left over from when that area was a tank base (last used in the 80's). It's home to a group of migrant men from Ukraine who were brought over on a contract to build a new highway nearby. The asked the building owner if they could bring their families before the fighting got to where they were from, and he graciously agreed. The train service I mentioned got them into town.
I went in to see what they needed. The short version of that was "yes, and we need it now". I left after a quick walk through where I tried and failed to take notes, my head a whirlwind of thoughts and emotions. It was like I didn't know which way to go, but was trying to go every way at once. Somehow I ended up at the post office. Mrs. Hungary had a package delivered.
Things cleared up a little later on the drive to the store. I was headed there to fill the truck with whatever I could. But decided in the parking lot that instead of going wild with the credit card all at once, I'd take to the keyboard and I sent out a public SOS on the book of faces. After that, I went off to secure some baby formula (One of the mothers was down to the bottom of her last box). Short story long, my phone absolutely blew up while I was trying to check out, and it's been blowing up ever since.
We got 4 kids to the doctors, none of the cases too serious (well, one of the babies tested positive for COVID). Mostly just fever reduction medicine, nasal spray, and cough suppressants. The appropriate medical authorities have been notified of the COVID case and will be involved from now on.
The outpouring of local community support meant we were able to meet their immediate needs (electric heaters, baby stuff, medicine, etc). These are people who DO have one local working member in the family present, so they're not in danger of starving. But that being said, they didn't bring anything with them either. Plus the barracks were home to nothing but bachelors, so the kitchen was devoid of anything other than bottle openers and a coffee maker (well, there were stoves present, but no pots or pans), nothing that kids could play with, and the food in the place was mostly sausage and chips 
We're on Wednesday now (holy crap, has it really been only 36 hours) and Mrs. Hungary and I have found ourselves centered in this new organization we seem to have created. People are volunteering faster than we can collect goods! The 4-Runner is over half-loaded on it's second run, and there's more stuff at the house. Another friend of ours (a Hungarian speaking Swedish lady) is coordinating amongst others in the international community and has an equal amount of stuff to deliver. I think we all got the worlds fastest crash course in what it means to organize relief aid (and we've learned a lot!).
Right now, we're working on calming things down. People were understandably a bit panicked when they arrived but now that they've spent some nights in the building they're realizing that this is a place they can stay. Our first order of business will be on three fronts:
1) Organize the donations with a focal in the building (an employee of the building) who can be tasked with handing them out as needed. This will help us ensure everyone gets something (Our first goods delivered were often absorbed by whoever was there and first and going forward with that would be very counter productive), and it would help us know what is needed for the next visit.
2) Get that kitchen operational! The kitchen adequately sized and laid out like a cafeteria so it should be no problem for everyone to share the facility once it's sufficiently stocked with kitchenware. Plus doing so would go a long way with helping the residents towards self sufficiency.
3) Find a room and convert it to a play room. Those dang kids will go nuts if they're locked in doors all day (I know mine do). We need a place where they can scream and throw toys.
Once those three are settled, we can work on "relief aid" I think. Just something where we pop in time to time and break the monotony with something nice for the kids and parents. This place wasn't really made to house "family dynamics" and the employees that work there (three each) are janitors, and maintenance folk. Not counselors. Having some strangers in to bring in fresh activities and treats would probably go a long way with easing the tension in the place.
On the weird side, I got to talk to the Mayor! He was a little shocked to know that these guys were in town, and was more shocked that we found him before he did. He said he was actually expecting a group of refugees here shortly, but apparently it wasn't this one. He plans to house this next group near a bus station we have in town.
Anyhoo, I went to sleep last night at midnight knowing I had to be back up at 6am. Next visit is scheduled for Friday at 8am.
Crazy times, but good to have a purpose.
daeman said:
In reply to NickD :
I was just reading about troops surrendering and self sabotaging etc.
https://www.news.com.au/world/europe/captured-russian-soldiers-weep-after-surrendering-in-ukraine/news-story/09fa9ee6feddb1ae47ffde813c82bbe9
Interesting. You'd think Putin's propeganda would be able to get to his own army if nothing else. Instead, it sounds as if the soldiers haven't been given much of a clear version of why they are fighting, and some may not have even been told they were being sent off to an actual war.
For all the talk about Russian disinformation, they really seem to have lost control over this one. Or just chose to have their Internet trolls sit this one out - they would have a really uphill battle. Whipping up left wing complaints about how Trump was too soft on Putin and right wing complaints that Biden ought to send in a flight of A10s probably won't do Russia much good here.
Hungary Bill (Forum Supporter) said:
We're on Wednesday now (holy crap, has it really been only 36 hours) and Mrs. Hungary and I have found ourselves centered in this new organization we seem to have created.
Are you accepting donations? Car stuff can wait.
